Intimate Discomfort

Uncomfortable silence or uncomfortable noise,
I’m not sure a happy medium exists.
The calm in the storm,
the chaos in the sanctuary.
Holding back out of fear, shame,
or maybe a sense of obligation . . .
simultaneously vomiting words out of nervous insecurity.

There’s no longer comfort in the chaos,
no longer solace in the noise.

I whisper to myself words that must be spoken –
words that no one else can be allowed to hear.

Searching for what once consumed me,
what once made me, me.
Still need that validation,
still searching to be made whole.

Falling on old experiences to yield new creations,
too afraid to utilize that which haunts me now –
longing to break free,
to find my comfortable escape.

Into fantasies,
into lives I wish I led,
into people I wish I could be.

So tired of forcing a smile when it hurts just to breathe,
so tired of the loneliness of not being what someone else needs.

Anvil on my chest,
ropes tied in my stomach,
Face fresh with blood
and mouth full of olives.

Wasn’t made to be loved,
wasn’t made to be nurtured,
made instead for solitude . . .
a prison in my head.

Diagrams and maps and lists and step-by-step instructions –
none of it makes a goddamn difference.
Took too long to become what I should have always been –
too late now.

Throat tight in that grasp of desperation –
a pathetic heap of one more chances and maybe next times,
of things might get betters and what if this is as good as it will gets,
of too old to dreams and too young to no longer cares . . .
of just me, always sabotaging happiness for comfortable pain.